The First Time I Saw You: the most heartwarming and emotional love story of the year

by Emma Cooper

  ‘Are you offended? I hear you and her were—’

  ‘No. I mean I met her briefly, way before all this stuff went on.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It is,’ I say with some conviction. ‘Brit-bitch is a bit . . .’

  ‘What? Harsh?’

  ‘No, I was going to say lame. I would have thought of something a bit catchier, like “Britch”, you know, has a better ring to it.’

  ‘Britch? I like it.’ She looks over to where Sophie is punching numbers into a calculator. ‘She really is a piece of work, isn’t she?’

  I’m wary of my answer. Kat is well known for orchestrating discord in the office. ‘I don’t know much about her really.’ I look away from the way her fingers are punching the numbers and ignore the nagging feeling inside that pushes a vague memory of Kat at the bar the other night to the forefront. I turn my attention back to Sophie and wonder if she is working out if I am a viable asset or – if the rumours are true – I’m surplus to requirements. I pull out my phone to check for messages and then turn to walk away.

  ‘I’ll let you know if I see it,’ Kat adds.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The cufflink?’

  ‘Oh right, thanks.’

  This is ridiculous. I re-read the last paragraph of the self-help book which Sarah left last time she was here.

  ‘I am a handsome, successful man, I do not need anyone to make me feel worthy. I am master of my own destiny . . . and I sound like a twat.’

  It’s not self-help that I need. I need Jon. Jon was my first love: is my first love. I don’t know when our love affair began – maybe it was when I first saw his hair, or the way his leather trousers fitted in a way I could never get mine to, but I knew it was love.

  My hands are almost shaking with anticipation as I reach for the dial; I have no control of my body as the beat begins. I stand, legs slightly apart, bent at the knees and head bowed in reverence as I begin to live on a prayer. I use the gravelly part of my voice that empowers the struggle of Tommy’s life as he worked on the docks; I lean forward and sing into my bottle of beer, ‘wahoooing’ all the way there, my mood lifting considerably.

  There is a knock on the door, so I pause the playlist. It’s unusual for anybody to visit me at this time in the evening. My stomach growls and I hope that it might be girl scouts selling cookies; instead, it is her: the Britch.

  I can feel the comfort and security that Jon has given me ebb away as I look at her. I have always been overwhelmed by her beauty. That’s the wrong word to use. My da always said I was a ‘namby-pamby’. I once showed him a piece of poetry that I’d written at school. My English teacher, Miss Clarke, had almost cried when she’d read it. She’d said that if there were more boys in the world like me then there would be less fighting. When I told Da this – after he had finally stopped laughing – he clipped me round the ear and told me to man up. As I look at the flush in her cheeks and the way she looks up at me, I can hear Da’s voice: ‘Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen.’

  ‘What do you want?’ I ask.

  She wants to explain, she says, and then she does this thing: she bites her lip, no, not bites, she sort of pulls her bottom lip with her teeth, and I know she’s nervous. I feel myself wanting to hold her but then I think about Da and the poetry and Jon . . . Jon wouldn’t take this shit. I let her in and she follows me into the kitchen.

  When I was a kid, I used to watch this American sit-com and every episode, I was jealous of the kids in it because they always had bottles of Coke in this big old fridge. We only ever had two-litre plastic bottles of supermarket-brand coke, which Da used to swig from. When I moved in here, this fridge was the first thing I bought, that and six bottles of Coke that needed a bottle opener to open . . . I even got them customised: ‘Share a bottle with Samuel’. I reach in and grab a bottle of beer, ignoring the bottle of wine that I should be offering to her. It’s a small victory and I hide my smile as my hand passes it; her favourite bottle of white is hiding next to the milk and she isn’t going to have a drop. I rearrange my face and turn to her.

  ‘So, explain.’

  I listen as she tells me that she already had the software pitch outlined before I told her about my idea, but I’m fighting the memory of that night. The strawberry stains on her fingers as they sliced the fruit into bowls – neat, precise quarters: whole hearts dissected. I remember I could still taste them later as we kissed and the way I could still smell them on the sheets after she’d left.

  How does she do it? I sigh as Sophie passes me, taking the wine and my small victory with her, dismissing my complaints and making the whole mess sound like an argument about leaving a damp towel on the floor rather than stealing my ideas and leaving me, quite literally, in the dark . . . Now she’s going on about my job just changing. I don’t want it to change. It’s not fair.

  ‘What if I don’t want it to be changed?’

  ‘You sound like a toddler.’

  ‘I do not!’ She raises her eyebrow at me.

  ‘Can we, God, can we sit down? I’m knackered, and my feet hurt.’ She drains her glass and refills it before turning on her heels and heading for the lounge.

  She plays with her ear as she sinks into the sofa and it kills me: that tell that lets me know she’s concentrating on what she is going to say.

  I glance at her glass of wine; her slim fingers edged with rose-pink nails grip on to the stem: she’s drinking too much too quickly. I notice the edges of her words have softened, their clipped consonants filed down, the spaces in her sentences becoming shorter and her gestures more animated. She kneels in front of me, asking me to close my eyes. Her hair has caught in the small silver hoop earrings. I’m still angry, I tell her, but the need I feel to unhook her hair and hold her is contradicting my words.

  I open the small box and inside is proof: proof that I was right to feel about her the way that I did. I can feel my heart pulsing, my blood quickening, bringing fire and warmth to my body when I didn’t realise it had been cold. She must see the way I’m looking at her and I worry that the intensity of my feelings is scaring her. Her smile is fading, and she looks pale. I lean forward to reassure her that there is nothing to be scared of and then she kisses me . . . and I feel like I’ve come home.

  There is a girl lying in my bed. A girl who has a small chicken pox scar on her left eyebrow, a girl who in the short time I have known her has made me feel hatred and love, betrayal and loyalty, fear and security. I know she can’t see the way that I’m stroking her hair, the way I’m watching her snoring gently, and the way that I’m smiling: slightly sadly, because I know that she is not entirely mine. I pull my arm from under her and kiss her on the forehead, step into my shorts and go about the business of cleaning up last night’s mess.

  The washing machine whirs into action, as I try to light the gas on the cooker and place the kettle on top. The big American fridge hums next to the old dinosaur of a gas stove. There are times when I have almost gone for the convenience of an electric cooker, an electric kettle, but there is just something about the routine of manually lighting the gas, the whoosh as it ignites, the whistle of the kettle on the hob, that makes this place, so far from home, feel like home. While the kettle heats up, I stare out of the kitchen window as the sun starts to rise, turning the kitchen walls the colour of those bubble-gum-pink lollies that I used to eat as a child. I spoon coffee into two mugs and smile as I replay the events of the night before: her embarrassment and the way she had started hiccupping; how her hand had flown to her mouth to try and hold in their sound and the way she had started giggling when they wouldn’t stop. The hard-nosed businesswoman laughing and snorting like a little girl. How she had fallen asleep on the sofa and the feel of her as I carried her up to the spare room. The way she had snuck into my room while I slept, smelling of soap and toothpaste; the way her skin felt beneath me and the things she said.

  I close myself in the downstairs study and reach for the phone. I have no choice. I have to
do it.

  Week Three

  Sophie

  The smell of coffee wakes me up. I stretch with contentment, allowing myself a few minutes of luxury as I replay last night. The lilt of his accent from downstairs fills the room as I glance at the clock. I should be going into the office to double-check everything is in order, but I can’t seem to find enough urgency to get out of this bed. I roll over on to my stomach and bury my head in the pillow, breathing in his smell, and I know that this is right. I was right to come over last night and I was right to, well, I was right to knock on his door.

  As a door closes quietly downstairs, I hunt for my clothes but instead put on his shirt like some clichéd romance film and wander downstairs. His voice continues from behind the study door and so I finish making the coffee, adding milk and stirring his three spoons of sugar into his cup. The door to his study opens.

  ‘Jesus, but you gave me a fright!’ he says, looking startled. He looks back at the door then to me with a half-smile, as if he can’t quite remember why I am here.

  ‘Do I look that bad?’ I ask, raising my eyebrow and passing him the cup. He notices the shirt and gives a soft chuckle as I pick up my mug.

  ‘Too tacky?’ I ask, sipping at my coffee.

  ‘No, not in the least . . . especially when there’s a button missing.’ I look down as he walks towards me, taking the mug from my hand.

  He’s snoring softly as I creep from the bed, put the shirt back on and go in search of my bag and, more importantly, my phone. I might not need to go into the office, but I do need to check my emails.

  The lounge door closes quietly behind me, muting Samuel’s snores as I retrieve my phone. There are fifteen missed calls from Gemma, my assistant. I sigh, shake my head and scroll through the missed calls: there are missed calls from Bob, too. This strikes me as odd, given that he’s on paternity leave. I open my email account and see that there is a meeting scheduled for when I get back to the UK. Something about these things makes me feel uneasy: something is wrong. I bite the skin around my thumb and then call Gemma . . . if I’m being paranoid, I don’t want to bother Bob when he’s not at work.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she yells down the phone.

  ‘I’ve, um, I’ve had a sickness bug, why? What’s the matter?’ My blood is starting to feel cold inside my body.

  ‘The shit has hit the fan, that’s what. Have you spoken to Bob? He’s been trying to get hold of you, too.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I hear the jangle of her charm bracelet, picture her twisting her purple hair around her finger, picture the inside of the office.

  ‘I mean that some guy from Greenlight has been telling a load of lies about you!’

  My hands start to shake. ‘What kinds of lies?’

  ‘That you stole the idea about the software.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’ My mouth has gone dry. ‘Tim knows that it was my idea.’

  ‘Well, I heard him talking on the phone and apparently Greenlight are going to start legal action against us. They’re saying that you had an “inappropriate relationship” with someone there when the deal began, to gain inside information. They won’t go ahead with the merger unless you’re disciplined, I mean, you know, fired.’

  ‘Who, I mean, do you know who started the rumours?’ I ask, not wanting to hear his name but knowing it couldn’t have been anyone else. I close my eyes. ‘But nobody knew we were together. It was just us,’ he’d said.

  ‘No. But they have minutes from a meeting that has this idea on it, and it was just after you went over to Greenlight the first time. I heard them in the meeting, Sophie. They’re going to fire you.’

  ‘I’ll get the next flight. Don’t tell anyone we’ve had this conversation, do you understand?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I deserve this. My eyelids close and push back the tears that are forming. Of course I deserve this. It’s ridiculous to think that I could just turn up here after I left him without an explanation and everything would go back to how it was. He thinks that I’m the woman who stole his idea. He’s blinded by my armour, I’m hidden from him . . . he can’t see me.

  I’m lost.

  And this time he can’t find me.

  I call for a taxi, and as quietly as I can, I collect my things from the spare room then hurry back into the lounge where I write him a quick note:

  Samuel,

  I understand why.

  Soph x

  And with that, I close the door on Samuel.

  The next flight is in an hour. I shower away the smell of him from my skin; I brush away the taste of him from my mouth, each action applying a fresh layer of skin, adding another layer of protection. I throw my things into my case, drink a tall glass of water and leave the room without a backward glance.

  As I wait for the lift, I hum the hymn that is leaking from one of the hotel rooms: ‘Lord of the Dance’. Memories of myself as an awkward thirteen-year-old standing in assembly at school chip away at the confident businesswoman that I have become. I wait for the lift to open, ignore the arguing couple whose responses and gestures tell of a lifetime together: he moves an apologetic hand; she drops her shoulder a split second after, subconsciously knowing his every move, his every gesture. Do they know how special that is? Pressing the button again, I straighten up, avoiding the haunted reflection that looks questioningly back at me from the mirrored doors. My reflection splits in two and I walk through the doors and ask for the ground floor.

  I step out into the lobby and for a second, I can smell him, see his smile, feel his touch. The images try to scratch at my new skin, to bury themselves beneath it, but I push them back. This time I will heal. I shake my head and walk over to reception. My nails tap agitatedly on the desk while I wait to check out and ask for a taxi to the airport.

  ‘Which one?’ the receptionist asks.

  ‘Reagan National Airport, please.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  As we pull away from the hotel, I fight against an invisible cord that tries to drag me back. The sound of his voice calling my name repeats over and over in my head. My fingers reach inside my handbag, pull out my headphones and force them inside my ears; music plays as I close my eyes. The taxi pulls me further away, the cord being cut in two – cutting the link between us.

  I can register the words that they are saying but I can’t hear them. They are snowballs hitting my face: sharp words that melt and disintegrate, leaving me cold and shaking.

  I have now been awake for hours; my body has no idea whether it should be awake or asleep. I’ve come straight from the airport, needing to set the record straight before any more damage is done. I’m wearing the same clothes I wore when I left DC and I smell of sweat and desperation.

  ‘We have to let you go, I’m sorry,’ Tim says neutrally, as if his words are not ricocheting around the room piercing my skin like shrapnel.

  ‘But I put this deal together!’ I throw my hands up, revealing sweat circles beneath my armpits. They look away, embarrassed by my emotions. I don’t blame them; I would look away too. I catch my reflection in the tinted glass windows. My hair is a mess: my curls, unleashed from their serum-straightened restraint, are veering away from my head at all angles. I’ve never cried within these walls, but my reflection shows uneven smudges beneath my eyes.

  Behind me, I can see necks craning to see through the glass-partitioned wall, sniggers of staff who have been jealous of my success smirking and throwing smug glances at each other.

  My façade is starting to crumble with every desperate word that I say, with every response that they launch back at me.

  ‘There is no other option here. Greenlight simply won’t entertain a deal with you involved. You’re lucky that they aren’t taking matters further . . . that we aren’t taking matters further. They have shown us minutes from a meeting where Samuel McLaughlin pitched the software idea not long after your . . . time in Washington.’ He raises his eyebrows at me as if he is a disapproving headmaster. ‘
I’m sorry, but there is just no room here at Sandwell for . . . loose lips, shall we say?’

  ‘But the software was my idea.’ I can feel myself unravelling, my words coming out in a tone that is close to pleading. ‘I can’t help it if Samuel had the same idea.’

  He shakes his head and looks down his small piggy nose at me, arranging his features, somewhere between looking stern and amused.

  ‘So, it’s just a coincidence that two people from opposite sides of the world just happened to have the same idea at the same time?’ he says incredulously.

  ‘Yes!’

  This time I don’t need to decide what emotion he is trying to convey. It’s clear in the dip of his head, his chin dropping into his long neck: pity.

  ‘Well, it sounds like you are perfect for each other.’ He shuffles some papers on his desk. ‘I’m sorry, Sophie. I’m afraid your time here at Sandwell has come to an end. Of course, you may keep the company car for another month and we will be offering you a generous severance package. That is . . . if you’re happy to keep this incident as quiet as possible.’

  My head nods without my control.

  It’s over. Everything that I have worked so hard to achieve has been taken from me. I know that no argument I can make will change their minds, and I refuse to beg.

  ‘Very well. I wish you every success in the future.’

  Somehow, I find an appropriate response. My words are formal, proper and devoid of the emotion that my face is revealing. I wipe away my embarrassment with the heel of my hand and pack up my things.

  The office hushes as I walk out of the meeting room, and glances dart towards me; the air is rich with gossip, effervescent with anticipation.

  Gemma half-rises in her seat. The movement is hesitant, conflicted, but resolved by an apologetic smile towards me, then a dismissive turn of her back.

  I keep my head up, my legs keep walking, my back remains straight, even though inside I feel like I’m falling apart.

  Rain is hammering against my front door as I push it open, drop my case to the floor, and let it slam against the frame. Silence follows its protests, cowering in every corner of the house.